Since its first part in 2005, the video game saga Yakuza has always managed to guide us with delight through the filthy twists and turns of the world of the Japanese underworld. And the serial adaptation, created by Sean Crouch and Yugo Nakamura, which has just debuted on Prime Video follows the same path. We find Kazuma Kiryu, protagonist of the games, as he tries to forget his past as a Yakuza (member of the Japanese mafia) to resume a normal life. Except that Kazuma never had a normal life. An orphan, he grew up with other disadvantaged children in a foster home, before finding a place in a Dojima Clan and becoming one of the most powerful warriors of Tokyo’s gangsters.
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A pure mafia series
Skillfully playing with time, the series goes back and forth between past and present and narrates the rise and fall of Kazuma, through three eras: his childhood in the 1980s, his entry into the Yakuza in the 1990s and his redemption in the 2000s. The narration is remarkably careful and does not make faithful adaptation a criterion in itself.
Blithely distancing itself from the 20-year-old video game franchise, it succeeds in building a pure mafia series, with its codes and its betrayals, around strong characters, ideally embodied. Ryoma Takeuchi is perfect as Kazuma in the vein of Jack Reacherwith impressive physicality. He and his brothers and sisters give life to real dramatic figures, in a universe without faith or law. Enough to possibly disappoint fans of the game, who will not find the exact story, but who will still have the pleasure of witnessing the birth of the merciless world of Kamurochō.
Six 60-minute episodes, on Prime Video.
